All posts tagged: pentax

In the Studio – Michelle

Published by

A few images from a portfolio shoot with model Michelle Santos. Michelle heads back to Brazil having spent several years in Japan. She wanted some new images in her book so that’s what we did. I’d like to thank Summer Johnson and Aiasha Orick-Fleurantin for their work on makeup and hair, and Michelle for being able to pull off so many different looks in a short time.

Let there be underwater light (Part 1)

Published by

A you descend beneath the ocean’s surface things become darker and bluer. Light is absorbed by the water and it does this to a greater extent at the red end of the color spectrum. When shooting in the shallows you can capture the vibrant colors of the reef, but sink a little further and your images will look a little green and possibly blurry from slow shutter speeds (or noisy from high ISOs). The solution is to shed a little light on your subject. Send in the strobes. I bought two used Ikelite strobes on Ebay (thank you Vadim in Australia). One is a powerful DS-161 strobe that has a 3W modeling light, and the other is a far less powerful (and much cheaper) DS-51 strobe that I use as fill. The above image is a pre-dive test in the bath, which showed that both strobes worked, and that the light from the modeling light allows the camera to autofocus on the subject. The strobes are positioned in this image for macro shooting. The lens …

Pentax 645 FA 150mm F2.8 v Pentax 67 SMCP 165/2.8

Published by

Introduction One of the benefits of shooting with Pentax is the ability to use lenses from a larger format on smaller cameras. With an adapter, you can use Pentax 67 lenses on the Pentax 645 or Pentax 35mm cameras. You can read more about this in previous blog posts here and here. The crucial question is would the old school lenses stand up to the high resolution images created by the 645D. I was really pleased with the results I was getting when using the 67 105mm lens, but unsure about the telephoto 165mm. I’d tried it once or twice but found the images soft. As I recently acquired a 150mm 645 lens I could compare lenses of similar focal lengths and see what the differences were. Method I taped a page from a catalogue to a concrete post about 3 meters away, then took a shot of the page using both the 645 150mm lens and the 67 165mm lens with 67 to 645 adapter. I also photographed the page at three different f …

Americana Singer / Songwriter Kluso

Published by

Kluso is a singer / songwriter based in Okinawa. I’ve seen him play live several times, and it’s a pleasure to have someone with such talent and love of music living just down the road. Kluso’s style of music is best described as Americana, a blend of folk, country, blues and rock. Inluences include Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams, David Gray and even Oasis. Please check out Kluso’s music on his website, or on iTunes. His new album Determination will be available soon.